


Petri Dishes

by Bitterblue



Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman, Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: F/F, Orphan Black AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-11
Updated: 2014-08-17
Packaged: 2018-02-08 08:42:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 1,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1934286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bitterblue/pseuds/Bitterblue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of short snippets and vingettes set within and around the hdm ob au. Each chapter is a complete work. The rating and other tags will be adjusted as appropriate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> First prompt, from tumblr user geoclaire: "I want more HDM crossover and Cosima and Delphine's daemons negotiating boundaries and learning to get along. Pleeeaaase."

The building stood mostly empty, white-wash softening the harsh stone. Cosima glanced around in distaste; there were a few piles of junk in the corners and scattered across countertops, an array of obsolete technical equipment. Prospero nudged his way into a few of the piles, coming out dusty and sneezing. Delphine and Laurent watched them from the doorway.

"Your lab is pretty terrible," Cosima finally said, after Prospero had investigated every heap of discarded lab apparatus. Her mouth smiled; her eyes did not. "You betrayed us for a lot of junk." Even with the rest finished, even with everything that had happened between them in the year since, bitterness still crept into her words. She felt more than saw Delphine flinch. They both knew how this conversation would go by now: Cosima angry, Delphine apologetic.

Instead: "Rachel has promised to outfit it with whatever I want." A pause, a step towards her. "Whatever we want. Stay here, Cosima. Think of the research we could do together. Rachel owes us far more than Professor Leekie ever did, and with him gone it's safe here now."

"You want me to stay, to work under the Magisterium after everything that's happened?" Cosima turned to face her, incredulous, eyes bright. " _You_  want to stay?"

"They have been stopped. They cannot hurt us— _you_ —any more. And a new lab, with everything we want in it.  _Cosima_. Think of it. Your sister has promised me anything I want. But she cannot promise me you." Her face was earnest, bright, still full of every apology Cosima had expected to tumble from those lips. They stood, watching each other, for a long time, daemons at their sides. Finally, as the light began to slip away through the grimy windows and the room began to darken, Prospero took a step towards them. Delphine's smile was bright enough to chase back the shadows, spreading unlooked for warmth into Cosima's heart.

 

It was slow-going. Equipment took weeks to arrive, ordered to specification. Delphine fussed, in a way Cosima had never seen before. The Delphine she had known briefly at Oxford was enthusiastic but methodical, and the Delphine of the past year was reserved, observant but waiting until she was asked before speaking her mind. This Delphine, with a lab to design and the hope of Cosima staying, was a constant flurry of indecision and motion. Watching her made the still-angry bits of Cosima soften: she was clearly trying to make apologies into actions.

Cosima stood in the space slowly being built into their lab, watching Delphine flutter and Laurent keep faithfully to her heels, until the idea of leaving made her heart ache more than the idea of staying. Prospero kept to her side at first, a gangly cat shadow, but as Cosima cautiously warmed, so did her daemon.

Morning light poured through the windows, now clean, as Delphine began to set up her first real experiment in the lab. Cosima had not yet begun anything beyond testing the machines; setting up an experiment would be tantamount to admitting she would stay. Laurent hunkered under the counter near her feet as Delphine fiddled with a machine and petri dishes. From the doorway, a mug of steaming coffee in each hand hand, Cosima watched her, something almost like a smile flitting at the corners of her mouth. Prospero, with a noise caught between a snort and a laugh, broke away from her side to settle himself next to Laurent, the tug of him drawing Cosima step by step closer to Delphine.

Delphine, who looked up with a sharp breath as Prospero's side brushed Laurent's paw. Delphine, who turned to look over her shoulder, eyes wide as Cosima moved to stand closer than she had in months. Delphine, whose smile chased the last of the doubts darkening Cosima's heart out with its radiance. Delphine, who took the coffee with a careful brush of her fingers across Cosima's knuckles. Delphine, who Cosima did not need the alethiometer to read.

She smiled in return and crossed the room to begin her own work.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 3 sentence prompt: Delphine before the events of the HDM!AU

She read through the information Aldous gave her again on the boat, and sighed.

Laurent, at her feet, gave her a knowing look that was  _supremely_  irrtating, and said, “If you didn’t want to do this, you could have said no.”

"I never said I didn’t want to do this," she huffed; the boat ride passed in silence.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 3 sentence prompt: Rachel before the start of the HDM!AU

This place was terrible, all stone walls made to trap and metal made to cage.

She was very sure her mother would not have wanted her to come here, after all, only it was like a warren and she could not work her way free, even with Leontes taking bird form and flying as far as they dared to search for help.

Daily, Rachel felt herself becoming more stone and metal, wondering if it would end with her becoming a statue or like the silent women who kept the place.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: more Delphine

They crouched in an uncomfortable space, trying to peer through the crack in the door as Rachel spoke to the man in the lab, lies apparently slipping through her teeth with ease; it made Delphine doubt, again, if they could trust her. It was certainly too late to change course now.

Grasping backwards in the dark, Delphine took Cosima’s hand and squeezed.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cosima, aged nearly 13.

They stood together, girl and daemon, looking together at the stone buildings that seemed to go for miles in every direction, punctuated by trees and hedges. A heavy hand fell to her shoulder, startling Cosima out of her reverie. "Well," said her father, "let us go inside."

Footsteps echoing through the vaulted hall, Cosima tried to keep her gaze fixed ahead toward the double doors, heavy oak things with one left ajar; portraits and stained glass caught at the corners of her eyes and tried to draw her concentration away. Prospero, in lean, tall cat form, bumped his head against her knee reassuringly. Cosima briefly wound her fingers through the fur at the base of his neck, then straightened and kept walking, trying to match her father's long strides.

When they reached the doors, her father knocked lightly and stepped inside, pushing the open door wider for Cosima to follow. She did, and found herself in an office filled with trinkets and books, the walls entirely shelves covered with the objects of a lifetime of adventure and scholarship. A tallish, tired looking woman with hair an indistinct mix of blonde and grey stood behind the desk, and though her expression was sharp there was an air of almost-warmth around her.

"Hullo," the Professor said, looking away from her father to Cosima, who stumbled a little at being addressed directly, "you must be Cosima. It's good to meet you, finally. Your father has written quite a lot about you."

 

In the following days, Cosima and Prospero were shuffled in a whirlwind between various adults, shown around the college and the residence halls, brought to lecture theatres and laboratories. It was the latter that most interested Cosima, who lingered in the doorway of a well-lit communal lab brimming with equipment she had only the faintest ideas of how to use until another porter came to hurry her along for the next appointment.

She was younger than most of the students, she was told, but her foundational education had been comprehensive thanks to her father; they judged her well poised to take a place in the foundation-level, pre-university coursework typically offered for children of professors and deans. Her father, always on the sidelines and watching, approved heartily. It all made Cosima feel warm, proud, as if she had accomplished some great feat to be allowed into this society and this place.

A week to the day after her arrival at St Hilda's, Cosima's father left her in the care of the Professor.

 

Allowed to attend classes and tinker as she liked outside of them (provided she kept regular meal times and observed curfew), Cosima and Prospero found themselves in the laboratory more often than not. And so it was that, on the morning of her thirteenth birthday Cosima glanced up from her first occhiolino slide—she could see cellular structure, just like in the illustrations—and smiled at Prospero. Her hand found the soft fur behind his cat-ears, overlarge and spotted, and Cosima knew they would not change again.


End file.
